


All Are True

by Kayndred



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fusion, Grantaire focused, Grantaire pov, Historically Inaccurate, M/M, Miscommunication, Not Beta Read, Requited Love, The Princess Bride References, Unreliable Narrator, because it’s convenient lol, but on purpose, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28658052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/Kayndred
Summary: In another story, this begets betrayal.A gift, turned sour, becomes a weapon. The ocean has no heart to bind, but it can be tied to its bones. Bound by love, in the end. A love that, hundreds of years later, would free them both.But this is not that story.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Les Misérables ▶ Enjolras / Grantaire





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really surprised that I've a) returned to Les Mis, or b) returned to pirate related things, but I am actually surprised to be posting. So.
> 
> I hope you like it.

In another story, this begets betrayal. 

The man loves the ocean, and the ocean loves the man, and the ocean is greedy, wants to keep the man forever, so he’s granted an eternity. Ten years of work for a day on land, because the job never ends. The safe passage of the dead - the most important task at sea - a gift turned to curse by that love’s very nature.

Hearts are such heavy, fickle things.

A gift, turned sour, becomes a weapon. The ocean has no heart to bind, but it can be tied to its bones. Bound by love, in the end. A love that, hundreds of years later, would free them both.

But this is not that story.

Here, a man sails…

◈

Grantaire was born on the sea, in transit from France. His family were merchants made landed gentry, and sailing was still in their blood. He was the third son, and a younger twin, and what little expectation there was for him extended only as far as the management of his reputation.

Which was how he found himself attache to the flagship vessel of his father’s fleet.

Grantaire was an artist at heart, and his presence on the ship was more formality than not. It was, perhaps, due to this that his guard was not at full capacity, allowing for his capture by the _Dread Baron_ to go unremarked upon for almost a full week after the ship was reported missing.

And by then it was too late.

He had been offered a choice - join the _Dread Baron_ , or die.

So Grantaire became a pirate.

◈

“ _Captain! Port!_ ”

He can smell the difference in the air through the open windows in his cabin. The light streams in across the canvas before him, where a replica of the view of the sea plays out in thick oils. It’s almost finished, or as finished as it was going to get, lest he allowed himself to nitpick it into dissatisfaction. He’d have Jehan bring it to shore before they departed.

The light and bustle of the port washes over him, loud and joyous in a way that warms his passive apathy. They dock, and the crew descends on shop and tavern alike, weaving through the masses.

Grantaire points himself in the direction of the closest pub and leaves a part of himself on the water.

◈

Bahorel joins him, and they stumble from booze to brothel and then into other people until they forget themselves. 

It’s the dim midnight before dawn when Grantaire slips back to the ship, one of a handful of shaded specters drifting through the streets.

Tension leaves him in coils when he has his boots back on deck. Feuilly, steeped in shadow, gives a nod before his attention returns to keeping watch. Grantaire retreats to his own quarters, intent on taking one last shot and retiring. Maybe smoke a bit of pipe by the window, wash the town smell from his nose with the sea air. 

But instead of his dark, empty cabin, Grantaire opens the door only to immediately register a strange shadow occupying space by the familiar squared-wedge of his easel. 

He’ll be proud of his draw later - just then he needs the weight of his pistol in his hand and then it’s there, level even as they rock gently in the night. 

“You’ve made a poor choice in detours this evening, friend,” he says, looking from the - closed - cabin windows to the human shape only sketched by moonlight. Feuilly would have seen them board, and the windows aren’t large enough for any but a child. “You tell me why you’ve appeared in my cabin and I’ll take less time returning you to sea.”

The figure - for he can still only tell that it is indeed a person, although he’s not sure he’s ready for the kind of maid that’d choose to invade a pirate captain’s cabin - at last turns to him, and a shiver runs up his spine. The chill hand of death wraps around his heart, and somehow, he knows the stranger knows it.

In the shadows, their eyes glow with the reflection of the moon.

“Captain Grantaire,” they say, voice as chill and deep as the Northern seas, “Captain of the _Dread Baron_ and her crew.” Grantaire’s breath rattles in his lungs, a soft cloud of steam drifting from his lips. His fingers ache against the the cold metal of the gun. 

None know his true name. The crew knows him as Roberts, inheritor of the _Dread Baron_ , just like the captain before him. It’s their legend, part of the misdirection that keeps them safe. Anyone who remembers him from before that would know the moniker, _R_ , and not his given name.

“Who are you,” he demands. His voice rasps out of his dry throat.

The figure seems to solidify, shape settling in his vision. A shadow apart from the dark.

He can hear the smile in their voice when they reply, “Someone with a business proposition.”

◈

A single candle is what the stranger - “You may call me… Enjolras,” - allows when Grantaire finally lowers his pistol. He sits at his own desk chair while Enjolras occupies the guest's, the little flame flickering between them. From its illumination, Grantaire tries to drink his fill.

This Enjolras is striking, cuttingly aristocratic. His cheekbones are severe in the bobbing shadows, his mouth slipping from plush to cruel with each flutter of the sea wind. In the liminal space around him Grantaire judges him to have a head of curls, either blonde or auburn, with striking eyebrows and a nose perfect for sneering down.

Grantaire wants, very desperately, for his charcoals and a drink.

He gets neither.

“What business do you bring?” It can’t be good, otherwise he would have approached in the light, or at a tavern, or even at their table, if Grantaire could be persuaded to put up for offers of jobs.

Enjolras sits diagonally, as far from the light as he can get, and the artful support his wrist offers his chin puts him even further from the flame. His eyes still glow that unnatural silver-blue of the moon on the water amid doldrums. 

“There are some who think themselves masters of the sea,” he begins, and Grantaire can see a marble carved jaw, the sweep of shadow below an Adam’s apple. His clothes are fine but spare, browns or reds in the sparse light. “They chart the waters and the coasts and claim ownership of that which belongs to no one. To everyone.”

He pauses, as though anticipating some rebuttal, but Grantaire remains silent. What is he to say? He’s a pirate - the _Dread Baron_ plundered ships from Spain and France that same week. 

“You’re a pirate,” Enjolras continues, apparently pleased, if the touch of warmth is anything to go by. “You take from everyone indiscriminately. I want you to steal and deliver cargo for me.”

That seems too… little for all the pageantry and secrecy. He narrows his eyes. “What kind of cargo?”

“Oh, all kinds. Riches, people, textiles. Whatever the ships I point you toward are carrying.”

“Whoa, mate - ships?” he waves a hand to halt their momentum. Maybe this rich ponce is crazy, and he wandered in during a shift change. Grantaire can handle that kind of nonsense, not whatever big picture Enjolras seems keen to avoid. “Exactly how many are you talkin’, here, because the _Dread Baron_ doesn’ tangle with convoys. Too much hired muscle, not enough profit.” 

“As many as it takes,” snaps the man, at the same time as the ship gives a fitful little roll. He can hear the wind snapping the sails outside. “As many as you need to, as many as I say. They are _defiling_ the waters, ruining migrations patterns, interrupting - ”

“Oh aye, alright!” His volume has him darting eyes at the door. Beyond a sudden lack of wind, there’s no noise from outside. Grantaire breathes a little sigh of relief at not attracting Feuilly or anyone else to this - whatever this is. “You’re mad at people for doing what they’ve been doing for nigh on all of existence, aye. Where do me and th’ crew fit into your little tirade?” He arches a brow. “You’ve said you’d be sending me and mine after untold numbers of ships, carrying all manners of cargo. What’s in it for us?”

The ship has since resumed its pleasant evening bob, and the tension in what he can see of Enjolras’ has been replaced by something less volatile. Still cautious, but not on the brink of leaping from his seat.

“Whatever they carry you can keep, sell, return - I don’t care.” The hand not cradling his cheek curls into a fist at the edge of Grantaire’s sight. “I just want their routes destroyed, their fleets capsized. I want them to wish they’ve never set eyes on the sea.” The last is hissed, and the candle sputters at a gust of biting wind.

That wasn’t what Grantaire was expecting. Enjolras appeared wealthy enough to be serious about his venture, and likely wouldn’t ask too high a cut, but - “How much plunder ends up in your pocket?”

Enjolras’ shadowed moonlight eyes snap back to his face from where they’d drifted, widening in what Grantaire was tempted to believe was incredulity. He’s proven right when Enjolras says, “None, didn’t you hear me? Whatever they carry, you keep.” Like it’s obvious. Like it’s that easy. 

“So let me get this straight,” Grantaire leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “You want the _Dread Baron_ , one of the most notorious pirate ships on all the seas, at your beck and call to pirate the ships you want pirated while receiving none of the wealth yourself. Is that the short of it?”

“Yes,” Enjolras looks surprised, “Yes, I - ”

“- am going to send messages to this ship how? It’s weeks of wait between correspondence even with the fastest birds. How would you reach us while we’re on a job?”

Something changes on the other man’s face, but Grantaire can’t see what it could be for the shadows. 

“You would be pirating exclusively my targets,” he says, still with that strange shift about him.

“And how shall these venture be funded, hmm?” In any other scenario such patronage would be a blessing, but Grantaire has the inkling that whatever funds Enjolras might have come from someone else’s pocketbook. “Not all cargoes are guaranteed to pull a profit, let alone ones that would make such exclusivity feasible. I have to be able to pay my men for their troubles.”

There’s an air of understanding to Enjolras as he nods, and Grantaire has a flash of realization that this might be the first time he’s seen the man blink. He can’t focus on that terrifying tidbit because he’s speaking again, saying, “As long as you are in my employ and chasing my targets, the wind will always be in your favor, and fish will always be plentiful.”

It’s said with such certainty, such conviction - Grantaire is barking laughter before he has a chance to muffle it. He shoves the extra fabric of one sleeve in his mouth before it can continue, but the damage is done - Enjolras’ unnatural gaze has turned even more flat and alien, and the part of his brain in charge of self preservation is screaming. It might be saying prayers, because Grantaire is sure he is looking at his death.

“I am sorry, truly,” he says, wiping at his eyes and trying to regain his composure. “I did not mean - I just - are you planning on outfitting us with a new ship? Have you some charm better than bait to fish with? I find these assertions hard to imagine.”

That seems to settle Enjolras, who’s free hand relaxes from the rictus claw it’d turned into. Grantaire isn’t fully certain this isn’t all some strange dream, but the stream of prayer in his head lowers in volume.

“Of course,” Enjolras huffs, nodding this time more to himself, “of course, you’re mortal, you have no idea of the boons of the sea.”

“Hey -”

He’s cut off by Enjolras’ hand, the one whose long fingers had been cradling what Grantaire suspects to be a perfect cheek, suddenly gripping his across the table. In the light of the candle each shift of tendon and bone is on display beneath flawless skin. It’s one of the most obscene things Grantaire has ever seen.

“Strike contract with me, human,” he says, and his face, for the first time, is fully illuminated. His curls are wild, wind tossed, his eyes the furious intensity of a lighting storm. Where his fingers grip like vices to Grantaire’s the skin is smooth as sea-glass, but not soft. He’s tumultuous, the shine of dawn catching the crest of a perfect wave. “Strike contract with me and your ship will never want for anything from the sea.”

And in that moment, he knows. This is no dream, no drunken fancy or inebriated nightmare. This is real. This man, this thin in the shape of a man, is real.

“ _Calypso,_ ” he whispers, struck awed and dumb, overcome with a maelstrom of emotion. The goddess - god? - of the sea smiles back at him, eyes like twin reflections of the moon amid doldrums. 


	2. Chapter 2

So the Red Pirate Roberts, Captain of the _Dread Baron_ , finds himself a patron in the - “God? Goddess?” “Deity,” -- deity of the sea.

Obviously it's not something he can tell anyone about, but Grantaire bargains for the knowledge of his Quartermaster and First Mate, and by extension Feuilly, who is barely separable from Jehan as it is.

“This is absolutely secret,” Grantaire tells them once they’re returned to the ship. They aren’t due to set sail again for two days, and the _Dread Baron_ is still running on a skeleton crew. Grantaire has crouched them all down beside the door to his cabin - inside, lest there be questions - but angled in such a way that Enjolras is hidden from view. He’s occupied himself with the books Grantaire keeps on the shelves built into the wall of the cabin, and won’t be seen until Grantaire stands and leads his party further in. 

“This is the most secret thing, ever. Speak of this to none but yourselves, aye? Lest ye be answerin’ not to me.”

He can tell Bahorel wants to jape, that Jehan and Feuilly are confused, but he tries to imbue his look with all his sincerest intensity, to bring home how bloody important their silence is. 

Only once he’s gained their solemn nods does he stand, stride out from the cubby wall, and brace his hands on his hips for want of something to do.

“Most trusted lads, this is Enjolras, patron deity of the _Dread Baron_. Enjolras, these’r the most trusted lads.”

It takes a bit more to convince Bahorel, Jehan, and Feuilly of Enjolras divinity, and Grantaire doesn’t think to question until later, cabin empty and visitors gone. Grantaire doesn’t want to think about the manner of leaving for some of them, either. Enjolras was there, and then not, and Grantaire was the only one to see. 

For a time all he can do is pace, following the ebb and toss of the ship. He sits, but finds the confines of the chair uncomfortable, limiting, and stands. Drifts from easel to book shelves to desk again. Nothing can hold him, mind too wild with the events of the early morning to sit still. 

There are always stories - myth, rumor, tales. Magic, curses, charms. The favor of the gods is present, maybe not constant, but something to be aware of. Superstition runs a ship as much as man power, and Grantaire knows too well how something as monumental as ‘touched by Calypso’ can change one’s understanding of the world. Less fantastic promises have brought greater pirates to the bottom of the seas. 

He won’t risk running mouths ruining his ship. Four is enough; too many, perhaps, but Grantaire and Bahorel have been tighter than blood for almost all of his life, before he had taken up any kind of seafaring. Jehan and Feuilly were more recent, but still years old friends. Part of the _Dread Baron_ ’s crew before he had taken over, and the oldest members of the current roster. There was no other group he would risk such information with. 

Drawing his hands down his face, his gaze falls to the canvas he’d been tooling around with. The one Enjolras had been looking at only hours before.

Frameless, there’s something yearning about it. The wood of the windows is captured at the edges - he’s shown the pain thrown open, in welcome or in desperate release, the water catching and claiming the light. 

He resolves to add more yellows and lighter blues to his palette before they depart, to better capture the striking dichotomy of the calm sky before the storm that he’d seen in Enjolras’ eyes. 

◈

In another story, the sea loves a man and a man love the sea, and it tears them apart until they are only reunited in waves and in death.

In this story, maybe the love is different. 

◈

The _Dread Baron_ follows the sea for years and years while the world changes around them. Crew comes and goes, through death and quiet retirement, but Grantaire, Bahorel, Jehan and Feuilly stay. They gain Joly and Combeferre, who find out their secret and don’t lose themselves over it. Courfeyrac is a close call, but they get him to mum, too, and Grantaire finds himself lighting candles to Enjolras almost every night, because how blessed is he with such a life? With those for whom his natural melancholy is navigable? He paints the ocean, and a fierce blonde man, and sometimes both, and sometimes the man is part of the crew. Sometimes he’s alone, but no less arresting for it. 

That last painting, from Enjolras’ first appearance on their ship, remains. Framed, at last, and packed carefully against the years. Sometimes Grantaire brings it out, to reminisce, to gaze at it in quiet solemnity. 

◈

“I first thought I would be surprised if I found you alone,” comes the warm voice behind him, no longer startling. He can barely hear the tap of his boot soles on the carpeted floor over the revelry outside. Enjolras comes to stand beside him, both of them facing Grantaire’s newest work. “But I know you too well now, I think, to really find truth in that.”

He feels his mouth soften into a smile, mind still leagues away.

A soft, calloused grip appears at his chin, guiding the angle of his head until his gaze must follow, gradually from the lost middle distance of the painting. 

Enjolras is, as ever, a sight.

He’s becalmed, face and eyes so easily reflecting the temperament of the sea. He looks on Grantaire with eyes as warm and bright as the shallows in summer, the play of human emotion the foam of his waves. Over a decade, now, and Grantaire can believe that he is looking at an existence older than man. Feelings fit him so barely, so fractionally; Grantaire can and has lost himself in watching the passage of thought and storm front on Enjolras’ face. 

“What troubles you, my Captain?” the sea asks, and Grantaire’s chest aches in warmth. It had been a joke, once, but now there is a tenderness he doesn’t know how to acknowledge. He wonders if Enjolras is aware. 

Silently he guides him to the second seat that occupies space behind his desk this night, and Enjolras folds willingly, open and curious and attentive. 

Grantaire can’t look at him. He looks down at his fingers, tangled in his lap, instead.

“I have been Captain under you for twenty odd years,” he says. Twenty-five, every day counted and journaled like a gift. “Longer than I was Captain alone. Longer than I have been beholden to any one thing before or since.”

He thinks to allow himself a moment to gather his thoughts, but his discomfort with the silence strangles the notion. He still cannot bring himself to look up, and instead barrels on. It’s easy to project his own nerves and expectations between them.

“Tonight they celebrate four score of my life,” he says. They’re off by a handful of years, and Bahorel knows, but he’s loath to correct them. He likes to pretend, too. “Almost my entire life, it feels, I’ve sailed for you, pirated for you, and I’m rich and infamous beyond imagining.” There’s a stone in his throat. His fingers twist together. Tighter, tighter. “But I am getting old, Enjolras. I know not how long I have it in me to - to stay Captain of the _Dread Baron._ ”

In the cold mornings of winter his joints protest the walks Joly has prescribed him. He wakes with aches a younger man, a younger him, could shake off. Rum and wine hold little appeal to a body that flags earlier and earlier in the day, and likes less and less a pirate’s diet. Joly thinks there’s a touch of magic to him, maybe from Enjolras, maybe from somewhere else, considering his age. He’s outlasted all his predecessors. 

“Are you - ” Enjolras swallows thickly, he can hear it. “Are you tendering your resignation?”

From the roots of his ribs comes the bark of a laugh so rough he’s surprised he doesn’t taste blood. At last he finds his shoulders light enough to lean back, free to look at something besides his paling knuckles. He pushes a hand through his curls, washed for this very conversation, and then scrubs his hands down his face.

Settled, he’s surprised to feel Enjolras’ fingers sliding beneath his. Their hands are so different in some way he has never been able to describe. Perhaps it is that Enjolras always seems to be more real than his environment, and Grantaire can feel that extenuating realness when they touch.

His eyes follow their inevitable path to Enjolras’ own, clouded by open confusion and bated hurt.

He thinks Grantaire is asking to leave him.

Grantaire’s opposite hand joins his first, cupping Enjolras’, and he knows. He will never feel a love as fully overwhelming and fulfilling as he does in that moment. 

“No, I am not,” he soothes, trying to smile. Some of the naked ache leaves his patron’s face, but the bewilderment grows. Oh, how could he ever think to leave the one most beautiful part of his life? No, never. “I mean only to bring your attention to something we both know. Something that cannot be escaped.”

Enjolras’ face remains uncomprehending as he looks between Grantaire’s eyes and mouth, as though whatever he is alluding to will reveal itself along the crooked slope of his nose or the crush of stubble he had trimmed into respectability. Twenty-five years together, and Enjolras’ face has never changed. Grantaire would never ask, and he’s glad of the consistency. He dreams of Enjolras looking the same way he did at their first meeting as he disembarks for the final time. 

But Grantaire cannot leave him suspended in turmoil, no matter how gorgeous, and he lays the final piece between them in the gentlest tone he can.

“I’m growing old, Enjolras.”

Silence reigns between them, only this time Grantaire has nothing else to say. He holds Enjolras’ hand in both his own while the other man absorbs his statement. He gapes for several long moments, forgetting the illusion of breathing, looking over different pieces of Grantaire but not truly _seeing_. He knows the moment it all comes together because Enjolras’ mouth closes with a click, brow furrowing, eyes sharp as they begin to _see_ the parts that make up Grantaire’s whole.

The grey that streaks through his hair, denser silver at his temples, the corners of his mouth. The wrinkles around mouth and nose, the crows feet, the deepening lines above his brows from frowning over maps in poor lighting. His glasses, and their gold chain, that perch in his breast pocket. His eyes even go to Grantaire’s hands, and he’s slowly, so slowly, aligning their palms to press flat together so that he might compare. 

Grantaire is sun tanned, his hands and arms especially, roughened by calluses and scars, wrinkled, the knuckles just beginning to swell. His penmanship has yet to suffer for it, but he worries that it, too, is only a matter of time. His painting would be soon to follow. 

“Oh,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire imagines he is one of the very few who knows the sound of an immortal existence being confronted with the inevitability of time. “Oh.”

They sit with that for some time, listening to the celebrations beyond the walls of the cabin. It is not really Grantaire’s birthday - rather, it is the day at the end of the year where the crew celebrates all of the winter birthdays, and his is one of them.

None of them begrudge him his solitude; it has been practice for most of his acquaintance with the crew that he spend part of the night away from the festivities. Enjolras hadn’t known, of course, and the time Grantaire spent alone became time he spent with Enjolras. No one will be coming for him, barring an emergency. 

The real reason he brings up his advancing age is not for pity - he doesn’t need it, and Enjolras doesn’t know how to give it. No, he broaches the subject because while the _Dread Baron_ is a pirate ship patronized by Calypso, he knows they are not the only one. There have been others over the years, and he thinks there are others now, but the _Dread Baron_ is the oldest, the most enduring.

Enjolras’ finest.

Grantaire hasn’t chosen an heir yet. He has time yet, although Courfeyrac feels the most appropriate choice. He’s been guiding him the past few years, grooming him to take the helm, the network of contacts. He’s sat in on dozens of meetings now, and he and Enjolras get on well, which is what Grantaire hopes most for. 

But he knows not every boat has taken so well to Enjolras; that, at several different times, Grantaire’s has been the only ship under his flag. He’d been eager in the beginning, willing to spread his influence as far as it could go. They’d learned, after the disaster that the Thernardiers had been, that even Grantaire had had to intervene in. It was a lesson he regretted Enjolras had had to learn, but it was the same one that had kept him silent, all those years ago. 

Now the _Dread Baron_ has sailed long enough for the myth to hold itself, and most all the crew knew they were touched by magic, and their new members weren’t sure what was full truth and what was embellished. Grantaire had had to wait through agonizing months, trial after trial, to gain trust, confidence, proof. He had thought someone with Enjolras’ time would be well versed in patience, and had almost laughed himself sick when he’d discovered otherwise.

Because of course not - Enjolras was the sea, and rarely imperturbable besides.

Now, Grantaire sits and exercises his own hard won forbearance, watching the travel of thought and emotion on Enjolras’ face. He is an open book, and has been the duration of their partnership, but often he is made of a language Grantaire still stumbles to translate. 

_How lucky I have been_ , he thinks in aching awe, _to have been allowed to dedicate such a part of my life to learning a subject so wonderful. What greater joy could there be, than being able to learn so much of the one you love, and still be able to discover the new?_

Eventually, Enjolras shakes himself free of his thoughts, though his hand does not release Grantaire’s from where he has woven their fingers together. 

“I had forgotten,” he says, gentled but flavored with the guilt of an admission. Honestly, Grantaire had not expected him to remember, human lives being so quick and fragile in comparison to his own. He says as much, and is shocked by the depth of Enjolras’ stricken shock. His grip on Grantaire’s hands tightens.

“I was not - I,” and Grantaire has rarely seen him speechless and never outside an argument - and then only for want of containment of his own temper. His own amazement increases as the deluge continues. “I hope you will not think me callous, as that was never my intent; and if that has shaded any of your considerations of me know it was not done deliberately - indeed, any such action or - or word on my behalf that may have spread such a terrible misconception was done in utmost ignorance. Which! I well know is not reason enough to forgive the transgressions themselves, but perhaps it will illuminate more clearly the situations in which they occurred - ”

“Enjolras,” he says, listening in bemusement to the second click of teeth that night. He still looks skittish, surprised, wrong-footed. Grantaire squeezes his fingers and he jerks, looking at their joined hands like he can’t remember when they got that way, but is pleased to find them already together. It makes Grantaire’s heart hurt, and his smile gets shaky at the corners. “I never thought you were being callous. I didn’t think it was important to you.”

“You - are correct,” Enjolras allows after a moment. He’d looked fit to make another tirade, and now looks abashed. He can’t meet Grantaire’s eyes, and stares at their linked hands instead.

“I had forgotten you were not immortal,” he says, clear but clipped in embarrassment. Grantaire forgets to breathe. 

Age has sanded down the rough edges of his impulsiveness, his self recrimination, his inwardly directed hate. The more he has seen of the world the more he has tempered. It does not change his bleak outlook on man and his nature, for too often he faces monsters of his own kin and looks them in the eye on the decks of subdued ships. 

But he sees better the struggle of human goodness, and has dedicated much of himself to it. He cannot believe the source of his unmitigated happiness no matter how temperamental, how severe, how quick to rile, would drive him to evil deeds. He has seen Enjolras lay the souls of the stolen and the wronged to rest when they pass in his embrace, knows his heart aches for them in a magnitude that Grantaire fools himself by thinking he can comprehend. 

Above all, Enjolras is free, and desires nothing else for all those that have so much as dreamt of him, or smelled salt on the air or heard a gull’s cry. Grantaire cannot believe that his actions since falling under Enjolras’ banner have not in some way been for the betterment of others as well as himself. There is a pride in that steady knowledge that weathers the raging winds of his bleaker days, and he has Enjolras to thank for it. For that growth. 

It’s that steadiness that allows the painful bloom of hope to continue to grow, even after the realization that for all that Enjolras holds high a fierce banner of devotion for his beliefs, his devotion isn’t love. Not in the messy, hungering, quietly, painfully enduring human way that sparks beneath Grantaire’s skin at every touch and smile. 

He knows he would wait forever for Enjolras to realize his feelings, because he knows he does not imagine them. Time enough he has worried himself sick at the thought of projecting his emotions so fully and convincingly that he could not see the lie of it. Time enough has he been brought from that consuming mire by Jehan’s firm, gentle words, Bahorel’s precisely dictated rhetoric. How different their patron’s actions are with him when at a distance observed. It is simply his nature to be slow to change, and change truly. 

But it is a slowness Grantaire cannot match. His own nature will not allow it. 

“Don’t tell the lads that,” he says with levity, trying to ease away from the gravity of the moment. “They jape enough at the expense of my age, needn’t be feed’n them further.”

Enjolras’ expression flickers with humor, but his eyes are narrowing in consideration. He scans Grantaire’s face. 

“You are the best of them,” he says, like it’s nothing. “You, the _Dread Baron_. You were my first contract, and you have never wavered.”

“There’s time yet to pass th’ torch,” Grantaire says, unsure of where he’s attempted to be lead. A delicate, strong hand waves the statement away before finding a home under Enjolras’ chin. His favored thinking pose.

“I have no other ships,” he admits after some time. Outside, the party has begun to wind down, or at least descend below decks. His look is equal parts regret, frustration, and bashful confusion, like he doesn’t want to have to tell Grantaire but knows he must. He hates that his fleet has been so diminished, and doesn’t know what to do about it. 

Maybe Grantaire has a better handle on reading him than he’d thought at least in this. 

“More and more I find my goals unsatisfying,” he continues, the gentle eddies of the port stilling, bated. He is as fierce in the full candlelight as he was all those years ago. “People travel, depend more on me than ever before. Civilization grows, and our efforts to stymie the control of freedom do not hinder the moving powers enough.” His gaze darkens, the air chilling with it. “More and more souls are lost to me, helpless between states.”

Ah, the expansion. West, ever onward, and man moving to see it. Sending other, less fortunate bodies to do the bidding of those in power. Many a slave ship has the _Dread Baron_ pilfered of late. 

“They have no shepherd?”

“None,” he confirms, sighing with a crisp North wind. He leans back in his chair, tangling their booted ankles, rubbing his thumb over Grantaire’s knuckles. “My powers do not extend to the afterworld, nor truly the place between. They linger at the bottom of the sea canyons, haunting me until they are forgotten.”

That is a fate he would wish on none who live. He has asked Enjolras all manner of questions about life in the sea, both mythical and otherwise, and he has never liked the descriptions of those things that live so far in the deep that they have never seen light. 

“I need a guide for them,” he says, meaningful even as his gaze flickers to Grantaire’s face and then away. This is a game he knows too.

“Perhaps one of those pleasant floating fish, the big ones,” he suggests, scratching his beard. “Or a squid. They do get quite large, you’ve told me.”

“A _human_ guide,” he laughs, eyebrows raising. Soft, so soft, the look in his eyes, and Grantaire wants to kiss him and hold him tight. “Someone I trust. Someone who is unwavering. Who deserves more time with the crew he loves, who loves him, doing that which makes him happy.”

Realization stalls the breath in his throat.

There are too many emotions and too few thoughts, the thumping of his heart too loud. His mouth is dry, and he can’t - he doesn’t - 

“I can give you more time,” Enjolras says, so soft. So gentle. Grantaire could weep.

So he does. 

In the dim candle light, at the fringes of their winter revelries, Enjolras runs a hand along the curve of Grantaire’s spine while he sobs into the space between them, saying nothing.

◈

He agrees, of course. Enjolras has always seen the heart of him, and knows that while Grantaire _enjoys_ pirating, and loves his crew, it is the sea, and sailing, and telling stories, learning new ones, painting his journey, that has always been the appeal. That he has helped people along the way has been a joy, a beautiful boon, and perhaps it is a shame it is not his true goal.

But Grantaire sails for love, and his love has asked him to take up a most trusted task.

◈

“The truth,” he says to his men, leaning against the banister of the helm, “is that we sail with th’ blessing of th’ sea. You all know our legend, see our plunder, our winds, the bounty of our stores. You know there’s a touch o’magic to us. I’m offerin’ you the chance to hold on’ta that magic, to sail longer, see more, line yer pockets.” There’s a susurrus of whispers, excitement mounting, and he whistles sharply to draw their attention back.

“It’s no small task we’re to be takin’, let me warn ye,” the seriousness of his tone silences them. “No longer will we be pillaging the ships of king and country. Our chances for lootin’ will be lower. If ye be looking to continue yer career in piratin’ then we can disembark ye at the next port.” There’s some shuffling from the faces he’d suspected wouldn’t take a shine to their new course. “The loot we’d be netting ‘ll be from ships downed. We’d be takin’ souls to their next home.”

He’d agonized over how to word the change in their direction, the alteration in their status. Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Joly and Jehan are already aware, and have already pledged themselves to him. He’d been worried of Courfeyrac, had taken the lad aside to make sure he’d really considered the job, the fact that their eternal life depended on Grantaire acting as Captain of the _Baron_ for eternity.

Courfeyrac had just laughed, eyes dancing. “Oh, R, don’t you listen to yourself? _Acting_ as Captain. If you find yourself needin’ a break from the position, or I want the practice, you just tell me the orders and I’ll tell the crew. If th’ magic of it all’s really contingent on you yellin’ at us to run the ship, we can work it out with Enjolras.”

Then he’d laughed again, clapped Grantaire on the shoulder, and popped off to bug Combeferre about some project or other, leaving Grantaire with a pain in his chest reminiscent of how he felt when he thought about how lucky it was to have had them all land on his ship while he was manning it.

Whatever the fallout was, they’d weather it together.


	3. Chapter 3

The rules of Grantaire’s position are simple, ironclad.

He will shepherd the souls of the dead to the after life every day for ten years. During that time he cannot set foot on land. But the first day after that decade, he may come ashore.

“Seems steep,” Combeferre says, adjusting the position of his glasses. Enjolras had obliged to leave a written version of the contract for them to peruse, for all the good it will do. There isn’t much on it beyond the rules of the agreement, all of Grantaire’s epithets as the agreeing party, the place where he’s signed, given a blood stamp, and -

“You have to cut out your heart!” Joly cries in shock, jabbing a finger at the looping script of the document. Anyone who hadn’t gotten quite so far was abruptly focusing on the on the nuances of the arrangement. 

Another point Grantaire has tried not to draw too much attention to.

◈

_“Very strong magic will maintain this,” Enjolras had explained. There was a terrible blade in his hand, ancient in the same way the creatures that crept in his depths. It drew the light, and the eye, with a hungry absence, the same more real than real liminality that shone in Enjolras._

_“And there’s no other way to do this?” Grantaire asked, chilled by the sight of it. The blade was clean, sharp, untarnished. “Have you done this before?”_

_“No,” he’d admitted, the passage of his uncertainty quick as the blade came to rest on the desk between them. Silent as the grave, despite direct contact with the wood. “Most magic is instinct - I will know what to do when the time comes.”_

◈

“I’m tied to the ship,” he shrugs, leaning back in his chair until the front legs lift from the floor. Bahorel’s eyes narrow from where he’s spinning a dirk over his wrists against one wall, but keeps his silence. Before the crowd, Grantaire can observe them all, but none have noticed the particular attention of his Quartermaster.

Jehan and Feuilly are both still reading the rest of the terms, eyes narrowing as they go, but it’s Courfeyrac who points out, “You’ve already signed. It’s done, then?”

◈

_“Why not now?” It broke free of him before he could check himself, subsumed by a strange, numb daring. Enjolras’ mouth opened to reply before he caught up with the question, clearly anticipating further interrogation, and his eyebrows flew toward his hair._

_“Now?” His doubt was palpable, uncertainty foaming into lather. He paled, the whites of his eyes sharp in his face. The humanity of it arrested Grantaire, made the breath hiss through his teeth, but he didn't take it back._

_The rise of his shoulders was stiff, belaying his own nerves. “I’m only getting older,” he said, joviality falling short even to his own ears. “I don’t want to waste a day.” But he couldn’t bring himself to quite meet Enjolras’ eyes, caught instead in the tangle of his curls, the shadow of his cheek from the afternoon sunlight._

◈

In the quiet that follows, Grantaire can no more bring himself to meet their gazes than to break it himself. The carved table’s edge captures him instead; easier to lose himself in its swirling knots and vines than brave whatever emotions his crew are feeling. 

No one has ever accused Grantaire of being brave.

“Grantaire,” the soft despair of Combeferre’s voice is almost as sharp as Enjolras’ blade, but Grantaire can only close his eyes. He has shed enough tears over it, worried himself sick for it.

But he is selfish.

“I couldn’, in conscience, convince myself to wait,” the admission slides free on a sigh. “The cost is acceptable, is nothing, for the boon. Eternity, traveling the world, seeing the unfortunate to the gates of the afterlife. Wonders no man has laid eyes on living, nor may again.

“My life may pass me by, but this - this is a certainty. Free of death, of disease. You may yet leave, having not sworn to me. But this is my choice, made as much for love of you as the sea.”

◈

_He couldn’t give himself time. The magic would bind to the ship - bind him to the ship - and Grantaire might be older than when they met but he was still mortal._

_The fear of the unknown didn’t age._

◈

They hem him in, faces tempered in grim understanding. He lets them touch, prod at the neat line that sits over his chest, peculiarly aged for all its newness. Jehan startles them by pressing his ear against the skin there, eyes narrowed in consideration. Silence claps the cabin to stillness as the others hold their speech and their breath to better let him hear. 

“It’s gone,” he confirms, mouth a flat line. Consideration and displeasure war over his face, shifting by turns. “Where has it gone to?”

◈

_Enjolras produced the chest in the same way he had the knife - between one moment and the next his hands were full of it, a heavy thing, laden with tentacles and crabs in its motif._

_“Grim,” he laughed, failing to loosen the knot that had appeared in his chest, just off from the heart that would soon beat outside him._

_Enjolras sat it down beside the dagger, and between his fingers was a two pronged key._

_“I will retain the chest,” he said, “and you the key. Only by mutual accord will you be released from your contract. Do you understand?”_

_There was something tenuous in him, a helplessness Grantaire couldn’t quantify. His own emotions were as muddled and unknown as Enjolras’, and he could not begin to ascribe human understanding to someone beyond comprehension._

_Perhaps he was afraid, or concerned. Maybe he doubted his own willingness to release Grantaire, should the need arise. Selfishly? Or perhaps the possibility did not truly exist. In the indeterminate future, many decades beyond Grantaire’s natural life, if he was released, would he die? Age so quickly through all the years he’d mortally missed that would feel nothing but excruciating pain? Did binding himself in that way mean enduring each day in agonizing slowness, overwhelmed by monotony?_

_There was no one to ask. Enjolras, with his creeping shadow of human doubt, didn't know._

_He couldn't let himself think in circles until he’d talked himself out of it. In pirating his instincts had rarely led him astray. He couldn't carve out a heart of doubt to lock away and fester for an eternity._

_“I understand.”_

◈

Alone again, Grantaire traces the edges of the key with shaking fingers. The sea, the wind, the night - all is calm.

In the cavern of his chest, a phantom heart beats an aching tattoo.

◈

_It sounded wet._

_“Oh.”_

_There’d been no pain when Enjolras’ blade had sunk clean through the bone of him, flesh parting bloodlessly. He couldn’t bring himself to watch, focusing instead on the concentration clouding Enjolras’ face. Thick as storms, lighting arcing through his curls. Beautiful and terrible, as his fingers dug into Grantaire’s chest with a crack that staggered them both. His breath guttered in surprise, but Enjolras didn’t waiver, so he could not look away._

_Then a tug - sharp. Final._

_In Enjolras’ bloody hand, Grantaire’s heart pounded away._

◈

“If your to stay, pledge to me now,” he says, light on the chill morning wind. The crew - what remains after their initial shedding - arrays before him. In the dawn, their faces look up at him like the sun. “For those who will not, you will disembark when next we make port.”

“I pledge myself to the _Dread Baron!_ ” Bahorel shouts, a whip crack in the ensuing silence, startling those closest. He meets Grantaire’s eyes with not a little challenge, but his grin is toothy and boisterous. 

“I pledge myself to the _Dread Baron_ ,” says Jehan, softer but no less serious.

“I pledge myself to the _Dread Baron_ ,” Feuilly, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Joly. A litany of voices, like a hymn. _I pledge to the ship, the sea, the sky. To the waves, unending. To time, immemorial._

He presses his hand against the helm railing, feels the grain of the wood, and a phantom echo.

◈

That night for the first time, the _Dread Baron_ sinks into the sea.

◈

In the weeks that follow, the _Dread Baron_ trawls the deep, sliding through the dark. There are no words for the state of the souls they find, huddling in drifts at the bottom of the sea. Instinct drives them; the descend dinghies that defy the logic of water, and the ghosts pile in. Full, they release the lines.

Like smoke, the dinghies rise.

Sometimes there are so many spirits, Grantaire loses track of time. He doesn’t know where the dinghies go, only that they return, that there’s always enough for all the empty eyed shades they pull from the dark. 

◈

Months pass.

Years.

Enjolras’ visits grow more sporadic, until it’s weeks without word. He seeks to bolster his fleet again, to try and lift another ship toward the mythic height of the _Dread Baron_. That Grantaire’s ship has vanished mysteriously, without conflict, girded by her crew, only strengthens the mysticism. Curiously, those who chose to depart before Grantaire’s oath remember little of the events surrounding their change of employ - from the gaps, rumors emerge. 

The crew still ventures ashore, tentatively pushing the boundaries of their pledge. Their experiments range from distance to duration, from their immunity to alcohol to their ability to manifest at will in different parts of the ship. Grantaire lets them, turns an amused eye on their more outrageous antics, and keeps his own counsel.

The longer the _Dread Baron_ passes above and below the ghostly seas, the more the ship changes.

Her sails flourish, flowing snaps of canvas; her deck lengthens, grows masts, rigging, coils of rope like snake nests. If Grantaire thinks about something long enough, wants it with his whole person - his whole _heart_ \- it will appear. 

More shelves in his cabin for his books. More space for his canvases. Larger windows. Sturdier hammocks in the crew quarters. _Better_ crew quarters. More storage for their steadily accumulating goods. 

The _Dread Baron_ sprints the seas to tragedy, beautiful in her savagery, and Grantaire vows his crew will never want. 

He cannot say the same of himself.

◈

Eight years into their voyage, Enjolras returns in the dead of night, startling Grantaire enough to drop his glasses, the lens cracking against the deck.

“Enjolras!” The surprise in his voice shakes, disbelief high on his face. The deity has been absent of them for close to two full years, before which he’d about chafed Grantaire’s side with how close he was. Almost a full month of his presence, only to wake one morning and find his desk empty, books returns to their shelves, his patron vanished.

Seeing him aches.

“Grantaire!” His joy is palpable, buoys Grantaire like the hot press of a Westerly. Energy crackles through him, bringing him across the cabin as quickly as if he were floating - he may very well be, for Grantaire has not attention to spare for anything beyond the light in his eyes and the smile on his face. “I have news!”

He begins to pace, gesticulating broadly, and Grantaire leans down to retrieve his fallen glasses. The glass shivers in his grip, and by the time he replaces them to his pocket, the lenses are whole.

◈

Dawn washes silently over them, the _Baron_ fleeing the sun toward Grantaire’s next mission, and Enjolras begins to wind down. Another chair has been brought to Grantaire’s desk, and Enjolras knocks their knees together as he surveys the changed cabin in the light.

“I almost didn’t recognize her,” he admits, a little awed, a little rueful. Doubt creeps along the edges of his thoughts, what ifs that scatter his certainties. It has been so long, after all - what if Enjolras is more a mystery? That month of unprecedented contact had been so long ago, and before that he had been… distant. 

Perhaps, now that Grantaire is no longer a short lived entertainment, he no longer can hold the attention of a god.

He had thought that having his heart removed would purge mortal concerns from him. He should have known better - age had not rooted out the inadequacies of his youth, only given him better tools to navigate them. Immortality, heartlessness, would not change his soul.

“Grantaire?”

Drawn back to himself, he finds Enjolras’ searching gaze sweeping his face, the lines at his mouth and eyes. He has not changed, physically, since the day he took his heart. Where perhaps he might have bled further silver, or wrinkled more, he knows his face so intimately as to find the _lack_ of change as easily as he might see the differences in his ship.

“Would you meet me?” he asks, words curious and blasé. The cavern in his chest aches. “On my day ashore, would you join me? I’ve been making plans, but I think I’d like it best were I to share it with you.”

A frown mars Enjolras’ brow, clearly spun by the non sequitur, and Grantaire attempts a practice from the past, seeking the passage of emotion in his deity’s eyes. 

He doesn’t trust himself enough to label what he sees.

“Yes,” he says at length, gaze still speculative. Grantaire wonders what he finds, what smooths the consideration from his face. “Yes, I can meet you. Have you a place in mind?”

“Not yet,” he admits, some of his tension unspooling. Better to leave it be, and maybe it will vanish. He doesn’t know what he would say if Enjolras decided to dig. “I’ve time, yet, and there will be further changes these coming years that may sway me.”

“I can find you,” Enjolras says with certainty enough that Grantaire finds it in himself to smile. Though he doesn’t feel as though he can quite make it real.

Later, alone, he sits before his easel but cannot bring himself to paint. His attention returns, without fail, to the open glass doors of his cabin and their unimpeded access to the deck that now connects the back of his cabin with the rest of the ship. The glass work is superb, flawless, impervious to all the weather they’ve had to face. Self repairing, yet malleable to Grantaire’s whim.

The ship, the crew, the job - all has changed.

And Grantaire still sits before his canvas, staring at the sea.

◈

They dock the night before, shrouded in fog and deception, a scattering of soul dinghies trailing them. Grantaire paces the fore deck in jerky intervals, hands unable to settle while his crew goes about their duties. They watch with varying degrees of interest and concern, curious about their Captain’s first contracted foray to land. 

“We’ll be with you,” Bahorel says, grip clapping firmly to Grantaire’s shoulder. “Anything feels off, we’ll bring you right back. No questions.”

At his side, Jehan and Feuilly nod, almost grim in their solemnity. He swallows, throat thick, and can only bring himself to dip his chin in return. 

◈

Dawn shreds his control. The sky is barely dove gray before he’s disembarking, taking the pier in strides that eat up the distance to the shore. It’s quick - he’s likely the spriest body about in these small hours, frantic with his daring. He ignores the clatter of Jehan and Bahorel behind him as the wood disappears beneath his feet.

It’s the last plank of wood that arrests him, worn where it abuts the street. His momentum almost sends him staggering, but he calms himself before he can face plant into the road.

 _He would not lie,_ he tells himself, staring at the seam of wood and earth. _Not to me. Not about this._

With a bracing breath he steps over the divide between dock and shore.

◈

He does not immediately drop dead, nor are there any cataclysmic shifts in the earth. The relief he sees on his best friends faces when he looks over his shoulder after a third step is sobering.

He has a day, he will not waste it.

Grantaire’s mortal wealth is exponential now, and gold no longer requires surreptitious pinching to bring in the materials he wants for his works. It helps, too, that Jehan has made it best practice to sell those Grantaire deems he can part with - his legal income is not insubstantial. 

He wanders from merchant to vendor, eating what he can, acquiring knick-knacks at every corner. Books, long curtains, new rugs.

“You attract unwanted attention, friend,” comes a slick voice from the shadows of an alley, and Grantaire leaps into his first fight in a decade with the vigor of a man twenty years his junior. 

“Thank you for that, lads,” he spits blood from his split lip at their moaning shapes before leaving, whistling while he heals. His sleeves are stained from attempting to stymie the flow, but he does nothing to tame the animal grin that carves across his face. Teeth stained red, blood down his front, knuckles knitting - its the most alive he’s felt in…

Well.

◈

He circles back to the _Baron_ to deposit his wares and set up his easel on land for once, content with his haul, with the seeds of rumor gleefully planted during his outing. A wealthy, vicious man of mystery stalks the port, easy with his coin but more than enough to defend it.

“Sewing turmoil, Captain?” Jehan asks, leaning jauntily against the frame. His rakish shirt is disheveled, unlaced, artfully alluring, and behind him the crew mingles in their trawling best.

“Sewing wild oats, First Mate?” he teases back. Jehan scoffs, affectionately over dramatic. Feuilly snags him by his pretentious collar, dragging him away and leaving Grantaire with his paints and the noon sea.

No small part of himself hopes his seaside seat makes it easier for Enjolras to find him. He wants to see his friend rise from the waves, glittering with foam and pearls.

On second thought, that should remain a painting only, he decides. 

Amused by his own wanderings, Grantaire settles into his stool. It’d been a wisp of an idea, initially, but he’s warmed up to the prospect of painting each of the places he stops at over the coming decades. 

The beach, the surf, the edge of the docks all begin to take shape beneath his hands.

◈

In another story…

In another story, this is the same.

◈

The sun sidles lower and lower, the layers and colors growing across his canvas. The blooming image crawls across him in flecks and smudges, tangling his hair, the shade of his stubble, the creases of his knuckles.

It sticks, dries. Stiffens like a thick rime. 

His vision blurs as he picks at a fleck of pale blue on his thumb.

There is no room for surprise in him, which is startling enough. He can’t tell if he was braced for this disappointment; the ache in him is too pervasive. His heartless, empty chest feels fit to bursting with the muddied waters of hurt - despair, rage, frustration. Rising within him is the tidal need to fling his painting into the sea. To summon Enjolras, to demand answers.

Because the sun is sliding toward the horizon, and he isn’t there.

Because Enjolras said _I_ **_can_ ** _meet you,_ and _I_ **_can_ ** _find you_ , instead of _I_ **_will_** _._

Because he had been played. Because he had trusted the ocean, temperamental and severe, instead of being wary of it. Instead of knowing it could turn on him, _would_ turn on him. 

All his years at sea, and he had forgotten its temperament in favor of its looks.

 _Look at what you’ve made of me!_ he wants to scream. _Look at how I am bound! See me! How can you treat a love, any love, this way?_

He feels for the first time the monstrous edge of the magic within him, scoring the insides of his ribs with terrible fever. 

He wants to scream. The stool skitters away from him as he jolts into standing, shaking with the tumult of his emotions. Eyes on the horizon - with more than enough time to make the short walk to the _Baron_ \- he grabs his canvas, damaging the edges with uncaring roughness. Jerkily, he vaults the low wall that separates the thoroughfare from the sea, boots sinking into soft damp sand with every harsh step. 

The tide is out, the lapping surf some distance from his painter’s perch. He kicks up foam at the waterline but wades on, water rising and eddying around him. Higher and higher, deeper, farther - his breeches soak through, foam and grit filling his boots. 

Could he walk into the bottom of the sea this way? Join the unknown creatures lurking, thriving, in the impenetrable dark? Would the magic no longer force his survival if he never returned to his ship or shore?

The waves push against his stomach, his chest. The painting remains thrust forward, like some decorum-less demand for acknowledgement. Salt and moisture cling to its still damp layers, and he thinks _good, ruin it. Ruin me._

Furious, his grip tightens, preparing to launch it as far from his body as the position will allow. The motion draws his eyes back to it, to the image that his hands had nurtured into existence all afternoon. One last look, the final nail of his hurt, before he throws it away.

But - it arrests him. The textures, the softness, the cascade of light over sighing shallows. On his canvas the sea blushes in rose and dusty yellow, ripples climbing the shore with hushing insistence. The ache in his chest floods higher, uncomfortably warm with longing. His throat is thick with it, moisture building at the corners of his eyes.

 _Oh_ , he thinks. _I see it now._

◈

Jehan comes to him later, after he’s hiked back ashore and packed his supplies aboard the _Baron_. There’s still a scant few hours before sunset, but Grantaire feels no desire to return to land just to have to come back. He’d rather greet his men as they return than sober them all up by descending the ship toward where he can already feel the building pull of travesty.

“An eventful day,” Jehan allows, leaning beside him on the deck rail. Their shoulders bump and Grantaire says nothing, gaze in the middle distance. 

“I was told an interesting tail of an artist who stormed out t’sea to deliver his work, and then returned without completing the trip.”

He chuckles, attention sliding at last to Jehan’s face. His eyes are bright, searching, curious - he knows his first mate has always been rapier sharp, but this must be its own type of magic. He’s sure Jehan already knows.

“I imagine he had a change of heart,” he says. “Wanted to keep the work instead of tossing it away.”

The probing gaze does not waver, but a jubilant smile begins to grow. He says, “He found satisfaction in the work, then?”

And Grantaire pauses.

Satisfaction? Perhaps not so transient a thing. So one sided.

“Truth, I think,” he replies.

Jehan’s palm is warm where it comes to rest on his shoulder, and they lean against each other as the horizon reaches for the sun and their crew-mates return.

◈

“Grantaire!”

Only his quick reflexes save his palette from a messy meeting with his newest rug. He’s brandishing his paintbrush like a dagger as he turns, eyebrows at his hairline.

For the first time in their partnership, Enjolras looks disheveled. More electrified than normal, vibrating almost, the wind from the open doors crisp and biting. Outside, the sails snap with renewed vigor, jetting them across the sparkling waves toward their next target.

“Enjolras,” he says at length, finally replacing his palette and brush to less defensive positions. His desk chair creaks as he takes it up, gesturing toward the partner that Enjolras might be too vibrant to bare sitting in. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

He does avail himself after several minutes of furiously aimless pacing, apparently unable to contain himself. He tosses his hair in fits, the _Baron_ dipping and rising choppily in response until he seems to settle. She won’t sink, his ship, and his crew is used to the signs of Enjolras’ aggrieved arrival. 

“You’ll never believe this,” he begins, with such an expression of injured outrage that Grantaire has to stifle his amusement. Many of the things Enjolras finds himself overcome with disbelief over are facets of human nature, intricacies of the mortal coil that granted slim windows into the differences of the mind of a deity.

Grantaire is fairly confident he’ll believe whatever Enjolras is about to tell him.

“The pirates are constructing some ‘Brethren Court’!” He grouses, crossing his arms over his chest.

The shocked laugh punches itself out of him. That - well, maybe he hadn’t anticipated _that_.

“Where did you hear this?”

“On one of their ships, meeting in parley,” he pouts, a cresting tempest, and the ship lists sideways as the winds change. “They spoke of pirate Lords, although none of those mentioned are mine.”

“Small mercies,” Grantaire murmured, steepling his fingers. He cocked an eyebrow at Enjolras, turning the idea over in his mind. “Do you want one to be? Are you scheming now to infiltrate their ranks?”

He waves a hand that rocks the boat, mouth a moue of dissatisfaction. “There is no need, not yet. I have no desire to align myself with pirates who would so easily adopt the vagaries of the monarchies.” He seems disgusted by the idea, but Grantaire knows - he is capricious and determined, steady; if the pirate’s ‘Brethren Court’ proves in any way useful, Enjolras will turn his discerning eye back upon them. He didn’t get to choose the pieces of his game, but he would bring more into his arsenal if it proved itself. 

“Man organizes himself how he knows best,” Grantaire rejoins, poking the area Enjolras too willingly leaves for his engagement. He’s smirking as he says, “Someone, or someones, must always preside at the top.”

The fervor in Enjolras’ eyes has the ship shaking, responding to the intensity of his emotions. Of all topics, he finds the by-play of human politics, in some way comparable to the gods’ as Grantaire understands it, to be the best source of heated debate. Grantaire stokes him with intent, much to the irritation of his crew. 

Enjolras outbursts can be… flooding.

“There is _no reason_ for a group to command others with impunity,” he says, adamant in his outrage. Grantaire taps their feet together, leaning back in his chair to really settle in. Its been some time since they’ve gotten into a row, and Enjolras wouldn’t have brought the topic up if he hadn’t anticipated Grantaire having opinions.

The ship keeps on, never deviating despite the small storm Enjolras’ passions raise around them.

◈

“And he hasn’t said anything?”

“Mm, not a word. I’m leaving it be.”

Jehan’s flat look of disbelief would hurt more had he not known Grantaire so well. As it was, he knew it was well warranted. Personal confrontation was one area Grantaire rarely felt reluctant to engage, but this was different.

“It would only hurt,” he says, watching the water, carved into rippling paths as they move. “And I am not yet ready to explain why.” Would it wound Enjolras, to speak of it? Perhaps. Grantaire thought so - hoped so, even, that the flash of humanity in him had such an effect now.

But it was a conversation Grantaire was not ready to have, and he would take that choice with both hands. He needed time yet, to comprehend his own magnitude. To find its truth.

Beside him, Jehan gazes out at the late afternoon sky. Grantaire shifts until their arms are pressed together from shoulder to elbow, grinning. “You can spend at least one hundred years teasing me over it.”

“Don’t act like I wasn’t going to already,” he says, deadly serious until he can hold it no longer and they both break into laughter.

◈

The painting from that day ashore becomes the first of many, and Grantaire waits decades before finally framing it in such a way so as to display the hand print ridges marring the sides. It hangs pride of place in his cabin, the first thing he or anyone sees upon entering.

◈

In another story, love chains.

A man loves the sea, but sees only the absence of it besides him, forgets the will of it, the ferocity, the impulsivity. Hates the things that he at once loves.

He forgets, in his grief and hurt, that the sea remained, constant, the decade the man worked for the souls of the departed.

Here, the man does not forget.

◈

Seagulls cry over him, sharp amid the bustle of the port.

It’s busier than last he remembers it, but there are still spaces where a man might set up an easel and paint the sea. Now, he just contends with the foot traffic of the business district, and tries to wedge himself out of the way.

“That’s really very good.”

Apparently not well enough.

Grantaire leans back from his canvas, rolling his shoulders loose. The shadow of his visitor obscures some of the detail work, and he won’t be able to continue until they’ve passed.

Best take care of it. 

It’s a lad, dressed somewhat poorly for the area, his hat in his sweaty hands and revealing a full head of ginger hair and freckles. 

“C’n I help ye?” he asks, playing up the drawl. The boy - for he looks barely touching into manhood - sounds fairly British.

“Do you commission? Take!” He stumbles over himself. “Take commissions. Do you take commissions?” He’s paled unfortunately further beneath his freckles. Grantaire fails to tame a wince.

“Aye, some. Y’ hav’ a subject i’ mind?” 

A small but well appointed sketch is thrust in his face. Clearly torn from a paper is what looks like a pencil replica of some family portrait. A grim, dignified man sits in a voluminous wig he appears to hate. Behind him, a girl stands with her hands on his shoulder.

“Her,” says the stranger, suddenly breathless. Grantaire looks to his face in concern, but he’s staring, rapturous, at the likeness. “Her hair is corn-silk yellow, her eyes the blue of a perfect spring morning. Her cheeks are so rosy, so gently touched by Cupid’s kiss. And her lips -”

He cuts himself off before he can become too indecent, leaving Grantaire amused and adrift.

“You wish to schedule a sitting for her?” He drops his affect in his shock. He’d decline, of course. He’s got most of the day left, yes, but patrons liked to linger, and negotiating a sitting took time. Time he’d prefer to put somewhere else. 

The stranger shakes his head furiously. “No, no sir. I had hoped to commission a bust in secret, that it might be a surprise.”

_Well._

“You wish a commission that might not match its subject?” He’s sure he’s wrong. What kind of gift would it be that made a mockery of its recipient. 

“I - yes,” he barrels on, wringing his hat further. “I have described her to you, you may - may interpret her from it. She is truly wonderful and perfect, I’m sure your talent will capture her wonderfully!”

Never has Grantaire had such a declaration made of his abilities - he feels he must cast aspersions immediately to offset it, but nothing comes.

Nothing except - 

“I accept.”

◈

“And then he agrees! To every demand I make -” he counts off on his fingers, pacing the length of his cabin. Enjolras watches in bemusement from his desk. “To not see the piece until it’s finished, to meet with Jehan as an intermediary, twice yearly - to however long it takes to paint - to! To possibly never see me again!” Grantaire runs his hands through his hair for possibly the seventh time. “Saints protect that Pontmercy boy, Enjolras, for someone will swindle him!”

“He sounds very in love,” Enjolras says, voice warm enough to draw Grantaire’s attention from where its wandered to the easel legs. He blinks guilelessly for a moment before rolling his eyes, smile hitching unevenly. Enjolras continues. “Certainly, a heart in love has gone through more than commissioning a stranger for a painting.”

“Don’t you start!” He cries, swooping to perch on the edge of the desk closest to his chair. He leans over the deity, pointing. “And how many hundred years passed for that heart to be heard, hm? Took a bit to really be ready. This boy’s barely started.”

Slim, firm fingers uncurl his hand, drawing it open so that Enjolras may rest his cheek upon it. He gazes up at Grantaire in sincere solemnity.

“I regret you felt so uncertain of me for so long,” he begins, but Grantaire’s thumb passes over the corner of his mouth and he pauses, eyebrows raising. 

“Not of you,” he says, easy with intent. “Never.”

Enjolras hums, clearly pinning the topic for later, but his eyes dance with laughter and the wind that snaps the sails is warm.

Grantaire bends and Enjolras leans up, their foreheads bumping. Enjolras’ cheek is cool against his palm, his own hand coming up to slip into the curls at the nape of Grantaire’s neck. Between them grows a rush, a pulsing that echoes in the ship. When their breath mingles, all he can taste is the sea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap folks! I hope you liked reading it, I really liked writing it. It was nice to return to the fandom that got me really into fic writing, and while I do want to tie up a lot of the Les Mis projects I started, I feel like most of them need a lot of revision, so I don't know that there will be a whole lot of Les Mis stuff happening in the near future. 
> 
> I'm trying to be better about responses (forgive me), but you can contact me here and [on my main tumblr, morethanthedark](https://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/) to yell about fandom stuff. I have uh, a lot of them.


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